


Kozmic Blues

by mphaal



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Ghouls, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Pen Pals, Rare Pair, Social Anxiety, the one where radio hosts kiss
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-10
Updated: 2016-11-10
Packaged: 2018-08-30 03:10:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8516209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mphaal/pseuds/mphaal
Summary: Kent Connolly has never quite believed that anyone could want him but Travis Miles makes him hope.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Set a few years after the Institute falls and a few months after the Silver Shroud quest with some slight divergences from canon. This will be a multi-chapter fic.

It’s funny but before the bombs fell and his life as he knew it disintegrated into so many little pieces, before his hair started coming out in clumps and before he knew what skin flaking away felt like, before the flash and the smoke and all the years spent focused on nothing more than bare survival, only half a second away from losing himself completely to despair, more feral than not, doing whatever it took to get by another day, no matter how distasteful, all the while wishing the bomb had taken him as well when it took everything, everyone dear to him instead of leaving him like this, alone with nothing but memories-  
  
Before all that, Kent Connolly spent as much time as possible trying to think about anything _but_ the present.  
  
He’d always been the odd one out: just a little too earnest and a little too gawky for most to know what to make of him when he attempted to reach out across the void to another person. He stopped trying early on and found his own friends in the comics and books he read with his sisters, the radio dramas he devoured with rapt attention.  
  
Ma would always say that he was just shy, that one day he wouldn’t have to psyche himself up just to make small talk with a cashier, but an awkward, isolated kid became an awkward, isolated man, and along the way, she stopped telling him he’d grow out of it. Maybe she never completely understood why he clung so hard to fiction, why his sisters turned out loud and rowdy and he stayed timid, but she knit him a Silver Shroud sweater every Christmas, never complained about listening to the same radio program every night, and was there to offer advice the only time he could muster up the courage to go out with a man and there to console him the only time he was dumped.  
  
He misses her. He misses all of them. It would have been a kinder fate if he succumbed to radiation poisoning with them, but here he is two centuries later, still trudging along and listening to the Silver Shroud and doing his best to be okay, even if his best is other people’s mediocre. He knows what people in Goodneighbor say about him. They call him Crazy Kent, they say he’s delusional because his world consists of rebroadcasts of the Silver Shroud and reliving past memories and sometimes little else, they use him as an example of the dangers of the Memory Den, of what _not_ to become. The words may have changed some but it’s the same as before. He tries not to let it hurt him but it always does.  
  
But-  
  
For the first time in a long while, things are pretty okay and you know what? Kent happily accepts pretty okay. Months later, his body still aches from what he endured at the hands of Sinjin and his gang – _ruffians_ , the Shroud would say- and maybe he’s always going to walk with a cane from here on out, but even though in the end, it wasn’t anything like what the old radio plays made it out to be, Kent was part of something bigger than himself. _“Goodneighbor’s just a bit safer thanks to the two of you,” said Hancock that night._ Kent aches but maybe the ache isn’t so bad.  
  
He’s never going to be as open as other people, and crowds and noise still give him squiggly feelings in his stomach, but ever since that messy ordeal went down, he’s started to leave his room more, started to talk to others more. The void is there, will always be there, but sometime after the sound of bullets stopped ringing in his ears, he had the thought that getting out _had_ to be easier than cleaning up Goodneighbor. It’s still all very frightening. It’s thrilling. He has at least five friends now, which is five more than he ever expected to make in this city, and one of them wears a _tricorn_ and calls him _Kenny_.  
  
And then there’s the matter of Travis.  
  
Travis, who runs the radio station out of Diamond City.  
  
Travis, who knows something of shyness too.  
  
Travis, who talks to him over two-way radio late at night while Diamond City sleeps and Goodneighbor hits the bars, and they speak of stories and music and Boston before the war until it’s nearly four in the morning and they realize they should probably get a few hours of rest before work but neither of them ever do.  
  
Travis, whose letters are the highlight of his week and who once sent him a drawing of the Silver Shroud so nice that he cried and Irma knocked on his door, concerned that his thoughts had drifted back to Sinjin again.  
  
Travis, whose voice makes him smile and try to hide his face in his hands, even if he can’t see him blush over the radio.  
  
Travis, who makes him feel things he thought were long dead inside him after Raymond threw him away.  
  
Travis, who probably doesn’t reciprocate feelings towards an ancient, awkward man with a gaping hole for a nose, scars and raw patches instead of skin.  
  
Who he doesn’t know for certain is attracted to men in the first place.  
  
Who would never be attracted to _him_ if he _was_.  
  
Kent doesn’t know what to do about Travis Miles but he knows what he _wants_ to do.


End file.
